“Right lads. Boutros Boutros Gormley wants harmony. I’ll sing the verses and you two can join in on the chorus. What’ll we sing?”

They start to snigger when they think of Gerry Adams locked outside in the cold. (Although this is one time that the Sinn Féin leader is very happy to be the man behind the wire, pressing his nose against the window of Government Buildings.) They sing in honour of Gerry.

Well spotted Nevin . Google are not alone among the biggest corporations to play Doubles or Sandwiches . On the positive side they did of course contribute some 18.3 million in taxes in Ireland . I wonder how much they avoided not evaded in tax in the USA ?

Hard to imagine that Google did’nt exist until 1997 and it’s original name was ‘Backrub’.

We live in a world where the wealthiest (corporations and individuals ) have the means to avoid taxes while elected governments have to prostrate themselves at the feet of said corporations in order to attract investment and where the middle class and working classes have been handed over as ‘prey’ to the corporate predators by our elected representatives of ALL parties .

Of course it was always so historically in one way or another but modern technology and the absence or inneffectiveness of financial regulation in the Anglophone countries has opened up the lambs/sheeps enclosures to our 21st century ‘robber barons’ 🙁

And the politicians everywhere passed the enabling legislation or repealed earlier controls to facilitate the ‘robber barons’ to eh do the business 🙁

“The draft plan for implementing the Croke Park deal in the Civil Service and non-commercial State agencies also hints that traditional privilege days for staff at Christmas and Easter could be removed.”